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Paralyzed Woman Walks Again
mgv writes "It's been promised for years, but it's just become a reality. Stem cells taken from cord blood have enabled a paralysed woman in South Korea to walk again for the first time in 20 years. The details are on the Sydney Morning Herald Site which requires registration, but can also be seen on the World Peace Herald. Too late for Christopher Reeve, but not for the thousands of new injuries worldwide each year or the millions of paralysed people from other diseases in the world."
Considering this real, practical success using cord blood-derived stem cells, I honestly wonder why there's such a push for using embryonic stem cells. Can anyone enlighten me as to why we can't just use cord blood cells (instead of embryonic) and make the whole stem cell controversy go away?
The article doesn't explain the important thing which is how they managed to inject enough stem cells into adult (for the adult to not reject them) from the small amount of blood available in an umbillical cord. There has only traditionally been enough (that the body's normal blood's anti-body won't attack) for a child's blood. Unless, they are talking about injecting it into the actually spine or something...I'm confused...
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
The government should be in the business for sure. The choice you give is a false-dichotomy. Is anyone really sugesting that those are the only two choices?
The difference between Republican presidents and a hypothetical liberal president (we haven't had a liberal president in many many years) is that the Republicans would give companies research money ("corporate welfare") and then allow the companies to patent their discoveries for the purpose of making the most profit from every person who needs that medicine. At some level, there's going to be someone who is too poor to get cured.
The hypothetical liberal president would also fund research, but publicly funded research would belong to the people who paid for it: the taxpayers. Everyone would have access to the new medicines, and even the poorest would be treated with them.
Of course, you're thinking "that's not fair to the companies, and they'll go out of business". Note that I never said that. If companies want to make money, they can fund their own research with their own money, and sell their drugs themselves. Liberals aren't opposed to business and people getting rich. Liberals are just opposed to them getting rich at the expense of the taxpayers, or in an unfair/unethical manner.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Success stories like this have popped up all over the world lately (although none as wonderful as this last one).3 1&art_id=qw1100886480700B243
A couple of weeks ago, a brazilian woman who had recently had a stroke was helped by a stem cell transplant.
Although doctors claim the healing could have happened naturally, they also report that "there is biological activity (in the area affected by the stroke)... "
Interesting, let's hope all these stories help build a united front.
The link here http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=
Agreed. IAAN (I am a neuroscientist) and at the Society for Neuroscience meeting a few weeks ago, there was a substantial amount of work being presented on spinal chord repair using stem cells. One researcher's results were scary: while the subject (rats if I recall correctly) were able to recover from SRI (Spinal Chord Injury) with the injection of stem cells, they developed allodynia, the condition where normal touch sensation of the skin is painful. This was because stem cells were not selective enough when making connections to existing fibers, and many of the new connections were incorrect. While this research does not mean the Korean team hasn't managed a substantial advance, it does mean that things aren't as simple as we might hope, and one should definitely view the Korean results carefully.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
My wife and I have 8 embryos in cryogenic storage, left over from when we did IVF (our twins are now 2.5, and it was worth every penny that's still on our charge cards). We pay a yearly fee to maintain that storage, but after a period of time, once we're sure we don't want to have any more kids, we'd love to donate those embryos for research rather than have them destroyed.
There are indeed ethical considerations, but I think those are on the part of the parents involved and are a private matter.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Embryonic cells are growing too fast, and are too unstable. They end up growing into a mess, since they can't be told what to grow into.
Adult cells are by definition those that are stable, having already grown into whatever their "children" will be. Embryonic cells (found in embryos with 1024 or fewer cells) can still grow into any type of cell, which we can't yet control.
It's true that embryonic cells hold "promise", but it comes at a cost. While we're trying to figure out (through the research you want) how to keep a group of embryonic stem cells from growing into an amorphous blob of cells for a discordant mixture body parts, how much effort and money are we spending on it that could be better spent on adult cell research, or even more efficiently by developing a cholesterol-enhancing french fry?
There's only so much money to go around. It's a balance between the far-off possibility of taming the embryonic cells versus the reality of using adult cells to fix broken bodies today.
See:http://www.stemcellresearch.org/stemcellreport
sigs, as if you care.
(1) stem cells can be cultured from adult hosts through hormonal treatments,
What type of hormonal treatments? Would these treatments harm the host? Are they as viable as the cord cells or even the controversial stem cells? Do you have a link that I can read regarding your claims?
(2) they have none of the rejection issues that embryonic stem cells do (recall, you will be implanting cells from another individual with different genetic makeup; your body will reject the new cells just like any other organ donation)
Correct me if I am wrong. However, I believe the South Korean woman was treated by a stem cell from an umbilical cord. This cell was not from her body. So I do not think I can agree with your rejection hypothesis.
I really don't see anything informative or citing of research in your post. The only thing I can agree with you on is your 3rd point.
This is great that cord blood cells work here. However, I'm still left with two questions:
(1) are cord blood cells capable of doing everything that embryonic stem cells can do?
(2) if not, then haven't we sort of sidestepped the issue of whether ethical objections to destroying small clumps of human cells (which could potentially, but will not, produce babies) trump the research benefits of embryonic stem cell research.
I am kinda pro-life/pro-choice. I've had the issue of abortion very close to me. If my mother wasn't so dead against it, she would probably have taken the doctors recommendation to abort me.
Although, I've learnt to admit that what a woman does with her body is ultimately her decision, even if it includes murder. No sarcasm intended. When it comes to your body, you have the only choice.
Anyway, let's get back on topic. The way that the church works is that they believe that God created things a certain way. So if God made things a certain way, then that must be holy. The Church is against gay marrige, because they think that a man and a man can not procreate, so it goes against God. Abortion stops Gods miricale of birth right in it's tracks.
This is where I totally disagree with the Church, and I think that it should take a back seat to logic. If it is proven that people are born homosexual, then the church should be FORCED to accept them, because that's how God created them.
As for medicine, the church believes it's ok, because God gave us the gift of our minds, and the ability to defend ourselves to live longer. This is argueable to, because God also creates death.
Anyway, I think I'm finally getting to my point. With embryonic stem cells there is no sperm involved. So the "natural" course of life has been diverted. So this is not something that is naturally happening. Also what you are left with is a bunch of cells, that don't make up life. They may have the potential for life, but there is none. So as long as we don't let those cells turn into life, I don't see a problem at all. I also don't see how the Church and Chrstian extremists can possibly have a problem.
I for sure have no problem with any form of stem cell research, as long as the cells in the petri dish are not allowed to mature into life.
-Derek
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
I agree, you would think that if there were a "gay gene" that it would have been removed from natural selection.
I've heard of studies saying that homosexuality can simply be the result of to much of the wrong hormone at the wrong time.
One of the interesting things about this was that if you look a man's hand. The ring finger, is longer then the pointer finger. If you look at a women's hand, then those two fingers are almost the same length. Yet if you look at gay men's hands (apparently some of them), will have those two fingers closer to the same length. Which is more like a women's. Interesting stuff.
I'm not saying that there is a "gay gene" or not. I really don't know. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that there is something in us that causes us to have gay children. I really don't know.
What I do know is that, I'm not going to tell someone how they can run there life. I'm also deffinately not going to do it because some man man behind a podium simply says so.
-Derek
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
As love for God is fairly hard for society to even notice, that rule is not that important when relating to others. And the second basically boils down to 'treat everyone as your brother' or 'be excellent to each other', or any one of a million ways that concept has been stated since the dawn of mankind.
But there are literally hundreds of tiny rules that have nothing to do with either of these rules, and I'm not even talking about rules Christians can't agree with, like the homosexuality prohibition. Even things that pretty much all denomications (At least, all the big ones popular in the US) agree on, like the prohibition on consensual 'wife swapping', don't fit.
Whis is interpeted as being against the 7th commandment: Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread.
Wait, wrong 7th commandment. Here we go: You shall not commit adultery.
It's a rule that no denomination thinks twice about, yet it has nothing whatsoever to do with the 'ethical base' of Christianity.
It's like if Kant had tacked onto his categorical imperative 'Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Also don't wear white after labor day, it's unethical.'.
Now, not wearing white after labor day is a fine guideline, but it's not an position on ethical behavior. Likewise, various people in the US use the myrid rules in the Old Testement, and even the New, to attempt to enumerate a list of ethical actions, completely disregarding the fact that the Bible presents an general purpose ethical standard that applies in all circumstances. By ignoring the fact there's a general rule, they can interpet specific rules without following the guidelines of the general rule.
There really are only about a half a dozen basical ethical positions in this world. Kant has the 'What if everyone did that' position, millions of people have 'Whatever I can get I deserve' position, some people do 'I treat people how they treat me', almost every religion says 'You should treat people with compassion, not as a means to an end.', doctors and some buddhists 'do no harm' under any circumstances (At least, medically, for doctors), etc.
The problem is that people wander around 'organizing' religions, aka, codifying explicit examples into the base ethical behavior, and then refuse to change them when they no longer apply. Or, even worse, codifying secular laws or even politicial positions as ethical positions. And currently, instead of codifying new rules, we've gotten such confusing and conflictory texts that we just have people reading whatever they want into them.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?